Since ancient times, Indian sages have been traveling to different islands and remote countries of the earth to give the message of non-violence, love, harmony and peace with the aim of making mankind happy, which is called Indian culture. This Indian culture had spread to many islands, peninsulas and continents of the world, hundreds of years before the advent of Christianity and Islam. The preachers who took Indian culture to other countries did not go as preachers of Hinduism and Buddhism. He had gone to the earth with the aim of creating a light of knowledge and exhorting human beings to renounce the path of violence and live in love, later attempts were made to underestimate his contribution by calling him a preacher of Hinduism and Buddhism. After the advent of Christianity about 2000 years ago and Islam 1400 years ago, Hinduism has rapidly disappeared from the whole earth.
Due to the spread of Buddhism in many Asian countries like China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and Burma, Buddhism did not decline as much, while Hinduism has died in hundreds of islands and countries. Apart from India, only the country of Nepal and the island of Bali of Indonesia have a large number of Hindus domiciled. India was declared a secular country by the 42nd constitutional amendment in the emergency in 1976. It was the first country in the world to become secular. In recent decades, Nepal became a secular nation under the influence with which China attacked communism in Nepal. Apart from these two countries, there is no secular national system anywhere else in the world. The country of which the Hindus of Bali are residents, 90 percent of the Muslim population lives in that country.
Hindus are getting destroyed in every way on the map of the world, from population to culture, everything is getting destroyed but the Hindu caste is sleeping in a stupor. In 1947, there were 20 percent Hindus in Pakistan, which are now only 2-3 percent. In Bangladesh also Hindus are being forcibly converted to Islam, their girls are being forcibly married, their houses are being burnt. Even in West Bengal such incidents have been witnessed in the last few years. The existence of Hindu caste is also disappearing in Kerala, Kashmir, Assam. Everything is being surrendered before the politics of votes. What is the condition of Hindus in countries other than India, it is necessary to see and understand it.
In the third and fourth week of April 2017, our family traveled to the two islands of the Republic of Indonesia – Bali and Java, in the throes of ancient Hindu temples to visit. During this we got the opportunity to visit the cities of Denpasar, Ubud, Mengwi, Kuta, Jogyakarta and Jakarta etc. We had heard that there are hundreds of years old Hindu and Buddhist temples built by gods on the islands of Bali and Java. These gods must have been alien beings from some other planet, whose technology and craft must have been of a very high quality in comparison to the technology and craft of humans of that period. Only then he was able to build a group of Hindu temples numbering hundreds and Buddhist temples with the largest pyramidal structure in the world. We had planned to visit Indonesia in the longing to see these temples.
Indonesia is definitely a beautiful country which attracts Indians because of its diverse Hindu culture and beautiful beaches. We started it as a religious journey but soon our journey turned into an exploratory journey of historical and cultural facts and proved to be one by one to remove the cover from many mysteries. As we progressed on our journey, new mysteries were uncovered. Within a few days we realized that we had unknowingly discovered the remains of a mysterious but impoverished India among the seven seas in the form of the island of Bali, longing to visit ancient Hindu temples. A poor India where there is no cow, no Gangaji, no wheat. There is nothing like milk, ghee, curd, buttermilk, roti, sogra, dhokla, dal-baati. Naturally, such a country can only be extremely poor.
It is indeed a mysterious poor India struggling in the throes of cultural pollution, losing all its ancient glory and forgetting its true nature. Even today 85-90 percent of Hindus live on the island of Bali, but 90 percent of the people on the island of Java have converted to Islam. The situation of the population of Muslims in Indonesia's largest island Sumatra is also similar, as a result of which today Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world and 90 percent of the population of this country is Muslim. The small lamp of Hindus is twinkling as the country of Bali. Amidst this fact, it is no less exciting to see the Hindu and Buddhist shrines of Bali and Java islands.
There is also a cultural difference between the Indonesian Muslims and the Indian Muslims. It is interesting to see and understand this difference. Indonesian Muslims, with the help of UNESCO, have discovered Hindu and Buddhist temples from the earth and tried to revive them by re-erecting them. In Indonesia's cities and islands, in front of buildings on main squares, statues of Hindu gods and goddesses are displayed with great pomp. Indonesian society has been female dominated for thousands of years. Even today Indonesian society is endowed with this characteristic. This is the reason why the women there do not wear burqa, hijab etc. They represent the modern world and take pride in their thousands of years old culture. A culture that is not part of Islam, but part of the history and pastimes of Indonesian society.
Our experiences are absolutely our own, but it became necessary to make these experiences public so that the people of India can also know the truth and tragedy of another poor India living in the middle of the seas. Before traveling to this poor India, we need to know its geographical and historical facts in brief. That is why they have also been given a proper place in the beginning of the book. Hope the readers will like this book. Shubham.
-Doctor. Mohanlal Gupta